OFFSTAGE: Trace Adkins on Turning 50 and Being Over Half Done

(CMT Offstage keeps a 24/7 watch on everything that’s happening with country music artists behind the scenes and out of the spotlight.)

Trace Adkins is going to be 50 in a few months. And he wants nothing to do with it. “I’m sure that there will be a party, but it will be none of my doing,” he told me Sunday night (Oct.2) after his concert in Chicago. “Why is it that to chicks, birthdays are such a huge thing? To me, they’re just not. People have to remind me it’s my birthday.” Then he pondered the big 5-0 number for a bit and said, “You know that you’re over half done at that point. That’s a stark realization.” And how does Adkins know he’s getting older? When he drives his 13-year-old to school and listens to the pop music she likes. “She doesn’t force feed it to me. But I just don’t approve of very much of that stuff. I think some of those girls are really bad influences on little girls. I don’t think the messages that they have in their songs are good for my little girls to be listening to,” he admitted. “Of course, I don’t let them listen to my music, either. But I don’t make music for kids. I don’t record music and then try to market it to children. There are some girls in pop, and that’s what they do. They record nasty songs, and then they market them to my little girls. And that [expletive] ain’t right. It’s like my daddy said, ‘Boy, you keep listening to that [expletive], you’re gonna be in prison.’” And that is how we all know we’re getting old — when we sound just like our own parents, and we’re positive that the only good songs out there are the songs we love.